The SOA Consortium™ today announced that a podcast and slide deck of the presentation by Ross Altman, CTO, SOA and Business Integration, Sun Microsystems, Inc., on “Getting to the Service Oriented Enterprise,” recorded at the SOA Consortium meeting in Washington, D.C. in March is now available. To access the podcast, visit http://www.soa-consortium.org/podcast-dc-ra-pr.

Ross Altman’s presentation covers two main topics, including the benefits of open source software and open standards, and the challenges and benefits of SOA. During his introduction, Ross talks about how today’s applications are not siloed or standalone. Enterprises are trying to take their existing architecture investment and leverage it to create new value, what he calls a “composite application.” Built at different times, using different development methods and with different owners, these applications present a huge challenge: making sense of heterogeneity. This is where SOA comes into play.

Ross describes some of the challenges of getting to SOA: a lot of technologies need to be brought together; it must deliver real business value; there are integration issues for large-scale systems; more investment may be required, in middleware, governance, etc.; and the need to develop end-to-end security and governance. Ross recommends using both open source software and open standards and making the most of developer talent by taking a model-driven approach. He also describes some of the benefits of SOA: reuse, agility, loose coupling and the ability to impose your will on the unmanageable. Ross concludes his presentation with his wish list for the future of SOA.

To hear all of the insights Ross presented, download the 53-minute podcast and accompanying slide presentation at http://www.soa-consortium.org/podcast-dc-ra-pr.

The next SOA Consortium meeting is in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on June 25-26, 2008. Organizations interested in joining the SOA Consortium and attending the meeting should visit the website, http://www.soa-consortium.org or email info@soa-consortium.org for more information. Visit the SOA Consortium’s SOA Insights blog at http://blog.soa-consortium.org.

About The SOA Consortium

The SOA Consortium is an advocacy group of end users, service providers and technology vendors committed to helping the Global 1000, major government agencies, and mid-market businesses successfully adopt Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by 2010. SOA Consortium founding enterprise members include Fortune 200 companies in Financial Services, Travel, Manufacturing, Retail and Telecommunications. Sponsors are Cisco, HP, IBM Corporation, SAP AG, Savant, Sparx Systems and Sun Microsystems, Inc. Participants include Fortune 1000 corporations, major government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Any organization may join the SOA Consortium. The SOA Consortium is managed by the Object Management Group.

For more information, please visit http://www.soa-consortium.org/ or email info@soa-consortium.org.

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